Garage Heater Types, which is better?

Unheated garages are little used during the cold winter months. Heating your garage can convert into much more usable floor space for your household. With winter coming, you may want to think about heating your garage. It is a well known fact that unheated garages are used little during the cold winter months, no where near the amount they’re used during summer.

The reason behind this is fairly plain; no one wants to work in an unheated garage. If you would like to heat your garage, but don’t know what the best garage heater would be, read on.

We’ll cover a few different types of heating below including the gas heater, and propane garage heaters.

First of all, decide whether you want a free-standing heater or a direct-vent, mounted heater. In general space heaters don’t work so well for bigger spaces unless you use an industrial sized heater. Another problem with portable space heaters is that they take up precious floor or bench space. So, as they’re not terribly effective, and because they take up floor space, these types of heaters may not be your first choice. While you can buy propane and kerosense space heaters, you have to be careful with your ventilation as both give off dangerous carbon monoxide fumes. Electric garage heaters are fine, but the con with those is that they are often expensive to run.

These smaller free-standing heaters may work okay if you’re simply looking for something to take the chill off the air, but if you’re looking for more than that you may want to consider a mounted heater. Of course, if you purchase a free standing garage heater that is big and powerful enough to heat your garage, it can also double-up as stand by heating for your actual home should the gas or electricity (providing it is not an electric garage heater) go off during winter, though if it is really powerful you need to make sure that it doesn’t heat up and damage your garage floor coating.

By far the more popular mounted heaters are either the propane garage heater or the natural gas garage heaters. These work extremely well, and are very easy on the pocket especially if you have either natural gas or propane gas delivered to your property. The great thing about these types of heaters is that they bring in air from outside, and expel any fumes outside, through venting that passes in and out of the garage. They’re also fairly easy to install usually, though you may need some help with installing the actual fuel line as mistakes with that could end up being very serious indeed.

Of course, if your garage isn’t insulated, you’ll lose a lot of heat no matter what type of heater you install. If you can, it is best to insulate the walls, roof and doors for optimum heat retention. So, no matter what type of garage heater you buy, be sure to insulate as well!

When purchasing heaters, it is also important to get the right heater for each area of the house. Some heaters are more suited to the kitchen or bathroom, while others best suit living rooms or bedrooms. Even if you aren’t sure exactly what you’re looking for, spending some time looking around here may help you decide on important topics such as whether you need to get gas wall heaters or electric wall heaters. Do you know what is the best bathroom heater? If not, keep reading.

Once you have an idea of what type of heaters you are considering purchasing, I’d suggest you go down to your local appliance store and actually check out the specs and the heaters themselves. While it is possible to make a decision based on information only, I always say that the best final step before making a purchase of anything is to physically go over the item. Talking to salespeople one-on-one is also worth doing, as they can answer any questions you have.

While I know you can very easily purchase heaters online these days, I am of the old school in a way. When it comes to household appliances, or anything you invest in that adds to your home décor–whether it’s blinds, or heaters or other accessories–I recommend you link up with someone who can come to your aid if you need additional help or advice on installation or running your heaters.

Having said that, of course it is entirely up to you how you purchase your heaters! If you are certain, from your research and from checking out other people’s heaters, that you know what you want to get and the installation is simple and easy, it certainly is a time saver to order heaters online and there are ample online stores selling all kinds of heaters.